Glenn Lyvers Poetry Site

Shadow in the garden

She was an incidental earth mother
born of lust like those be-
fore her. Though the passion faded,
the garden erupted anyway.
Things abandoned will grow

in lackluster secret ways,
absent the missing gardener—
day by day, always growing. A sin
for the crops—to be left alone
to grow or wither, up to them.
And when they do grow, gorgeous,

the gardener brags to everyone
who will listen. To such rhetoric
people smile and never question that
they never saw the gardener, garden—
guarding against anything. A lie,

and one told so often
that one comes to believe
the lies of the great gardener
standing amongst the gorgeous,
like a shadow.